


Act Five

by orphan_account



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Episode: s03e05 A Life in the Day, Fix-It, M/M, Pet Names, Post-Season/Series 05, Post-Season/Series 05 Finale, Quentin Coldwater Deserved Better, Reunions, Sort Of, deus ex mysterious bracelet, series finale fix it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-02
Updated: 2020-04-02
Packaged: 2021-02-28 17:48:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,776
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23441182
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Fucking Charlton. Fucking Santa. Of course the bracelet had to be some sort of fucked up portkey, pre-programmed to plop Eliot down in the middle of fucking nowhere. Of course.
Relationships: Quentin Coldwater/Eliot Waugh
Comments: 20
Kudos: 203





	Act Five

**Author's Note:**

> fucking chARLton?!!?!?!?!!!?!?!! r u kidding me!!!!
> 
> i wrote this in a blind rage

“I’ve been working with that hedge witch who specializes in magical objects,” Charlton says.

Even after months, Eliot still boggles a little when he looks at him. It’s strange to be seeing a perv’s body and hearing—well, Charlton. Pure innocence. The dissonance is almost physically painful. “Right,” Eliot says, once he’s processed. “And, why have you been doing that?”

Charlton produces the bracelet, the one Eliot got from Santa all those weeks ago. “This. I wanted to figure out how this works—as a thank you.”

“And how does it work? Or rather, what does it do?”

Charlton opens his mouth, then closes it, waits a thoughtful beat, and opens it again. “Maybe you should just put it on. I don’t think you’d believe me if I told you.”

Eliot eyes the bracelet distrustfully. For all that he’s a professor at a magical college now, he’s had enough of charmed and enchanted and cursed objects to last _literally_ the rest of his natural or unnatural life. He’d really rather not touch anything he doesn’t know the provenance of, but he’s already had a few martinis, and it’s Charlton offering it to him—Charlton, who’s probably never even swatted a fly. So he sighs, and he drains his drink, and he holds out his hand for the bracelet.

Instead of handing it to him, Charlton goes ahead and slips it on his wrist.

The second Eliot feels the metal touch his skin, this awful twisting sensation rends up his spine, and then he’s staggering and catching himself on wet, grassy ground.

He stares down at the dirt between his fingers and contemplates throwing up for a few minutes. Then he flops over on his back, completely unable to keep his arms and legs from turning to jelly, and stares up at the clear—well, _cloudy_ gray sky above him. It’s wide open. There are birds singing. Eliot’s tense in a way that means his body is instinctively getting ready for an attack, but…there are birds singing.

Fucking Charlton. Fucking Santa. Of course the bracelet had to be some sort of fucked up portkey, pre-programmed to plop Eliot down in the middle of fucking nowhere. Of _course_.

Eliot sighs and scrubs his hands over his face. Ridiculously, he feels tears building at the back of his eyes, and it’s insane that this is the thing that does it. Margo almost dying, then disappearing. Alice gone, Fen gone, Josh gone, stuck alone in a fucking cabin of fucking memories with fucking Charlton, and _this_ is what pushes Eliot over the edge. Laying in a field, staring up at a gray sky and…

Smoke.

Eliot drops his hands. There’s a thin stream of smoke chugging across the sky, patches of dark black and mottled gray. Eliot can almost smell it, if he focuses.

“Eliot?” someone says.

Eliot sits up so fast his head spins.

He knows who it is. He knows that voice, but he refuses to let himself think it. He refuses to turn around, because his eyes are already watery and the martinis are wearing off and if he even thinks the first letter it will tear down the whole emotionally-numb house of cards he’s built himself into. It’s his imagination. It has to be. He’s imagining things. Only, for a split second, before he’d started having auditory hallucinations, he’d inhaled the woody scent of smoke and almost thought _It smells like home_.

“Eliot,” the voice says again, urgent and closer.

Eliot drops his head in his hands, thinking _Go away, go away, go away._

And then he’s gone.

Charlton gapes at him from the other end of the couch, then gives up gaping and waves his hands urgently. “What the hell did you do? You were only gone for a minute!”

Eliot blinks and reaches for a bottle of vodka. He doesn’t usually drink it straight, but he’ll make an exception. “Was I supposed to be gone for longer? What the fuck was that—”

“It was supposed to take you to the underworld. Did it not take you to the underworld?”

Eliot stares at him. “What?”

“It was supposed to take you to the one person you needed to see most, and— _oh,_ Eliot, the alcohol.“

Vodka dribbles on the floor, on Eliot’s shoes, overflowing from his martini glass. Charlton grabs the bottle out of his hands, which is good, since Eliot finds himself suddenly incapable of doing anything but staring at the bracelet on his wrist and thinking _Oh, shit, oh, shit, oh, shit._

“How do I make it work again?” he asks.

Charlton’s trying to mop up the vodka puddle with a cocktail napkin. “Switch it to the other—“

Before he can finish, Eliot moves the bracelet to his other wrist, and is gone.

The spine twist is less weird this time, but it still sends Eliot down on his hands and knees. It’s raining. His slacks, already damp from his last romp in the mud, soak all the way through, but Eliot’s never cared less about a good pair of pants in his life. He scrambles to his feet, whirls around, scanning the entire field, which is actually not a field so much as a clearing, and—freezes.

There’s no mosaic, but.

_But_. Eliot chokes on a sob just looking at it. Their cottage. Barely more than a hut, but they’d always called it a cottage. Cottage was homier. Eliot had insisted and Quentin had gone along, knowing somehow that Eliot needed that smidgen of where they’d come from. Cottage to cottage.

It’s exactly the same. Same crooked eaves, same ugly green patch on the roof—the first and last home improvement project Eliot had insisted on doing without magic. Same cute little windows, same chimney churning out woodsmoke, same flowers growing in the window baskets, same front door that Eliot pressed Quentin into dozens of times, hundreds of times, the creaky door that woke him up in the morning, that he tried to open and close silently at night, Quentin still slumbering in bed but Eliot beset by terrible insomnia, sneaking out to get as much work in as he could at the mosaic before Quentin noticed him missing and came looking, sleepy and confused, saying, _El?_

Eliot remembers (he can’t tell whether the wetness on his face was from tears or rain)—he remembers Quentin crouching next to him one night, wrapped tight in an afghan he’d knitted himself. He’d watched Eliot for long minutes before he said anything, watched Eliot rubbing his tired eyes and muttering to himself as he moved pieces around.

And then he’d said, “Do you really hate it here that much?”

“Q,” Eliot remembers himself saying, “it’s not—“

“I know,” Quentin had cut him off, before he could finish.

Eliot doesn’t remember what he’d been about to say, but he knows what it should have been: _I love it here, Q. I love you, and you’re here, and we’re both safe, so I love it here_.

“I know,” Quentin had said again, and tugged at him. “Come back to bed, okay?”

And Eliot had gone. He hadn’t said—he’d never said. Fifty fucking years, and he’d never said.

Well, he’s not blowing another chance. If this is his last shot, he’s not blowing it.

“Quentin?” he calls. The cottage is silent. “Q, are you—“

“Eliot,” Quentin says, behind him.

Eliot turns so fast he probably gives himself whiplash, but he doesn’t care. Because Quentin is standing there in that dumb straw hat he always used to wear in the rain, eyes sad and earnest, lips slightly parted in that way they do when he wants to say _Holy shit_ but doesn’t have the mental bandwidth. He opens his mouth to say something, then seems to think better of it, drops his basket of vegetables, crashes forward and seizes Eliot in the tightest hug he’s ever fucking gotten.

Eliot gives as good as he gets. “Q,” he sobs, involuntarily, “Q, jesus christ, Q—“ over and over, crying openly into Quentin’s shoulder as the smaller man digs his fingers into Eliot’s tailored vest, his hair, and murmurs, “I thought I imagined you. Holy fuck, El, I thought I imagined you.”

“You didn’t imagine me,” Eliot laughs in his arms, still crying, but overjoyed. “I’m here.”

Quentin pulls away. Eliot doesn’t let him go far, terrified that if he takes his hands off him he’ll never get to put them back on, but Quentin only wants to go far enough to look him in the eye. His stupid hat has been knocked off, so Eliot gets the full force of his gaze, and it’s—staggering. “About that,” Quentin says. “How are you here? You’re not—Did you die?”

“Santa gave me a bracelet,” Eliot explains, absently.

He can’t bring himself to focus on Quentin’s words when there’s all this: Quentin in his arms, the warmth and solidness of his body, the faint shadow of stubble on his jaw. Quentin twisting his hands in Eliot’s shirt sleeve, tight and too fast and clumsy, like he’s so shocked that he’s suddenly able to do it, to actually physically grab onto him, that he has to do it _now_ , all the way, as best he can.

Quentin frowns slightly, while all that grabbing is going on. “Santa gave you a bracelet?”

Eliot takes one hand off Quentin’s back, extremely reluctantly, and gives the bracelet a jaunty wave to demonstrate. “Apparently it takes me to the person I need to see most.”

Quentin’s eyebrows shoot up. He grabs Eliot’s wrist, careful not to touch the bracelet, and Eliot knows from the look on his face that he’s about to say something nerdy before he even opens his mouth. “El, this is a golden ticket. Jesus, do you even know how rare these are?”

“I’m sure you’ll enlighten me,” Eliot murmurs against his forehead.

“It’s forged around a—well, the core is a feather from the wings on Hermes’ sandals. It can take you, well, literally anywhere in the multiverse you want to go. Someone really just gave this to you?”

“He’s Santa,” Eliot says. “Giving things to people is sort of his whole deal.”

Quentin hums, spreads Eliot’s fingers between his, and leans in to press a kiss to his palm. Eliot’s stomach drops straight through the underworld to whatever the hell is underneath it, and he must tense up, because Quentin drops his hand almost immediately and steps back out of Eliot’s grasp. “Sorry,” he says, looking sick. “Sorry, I know you don’t, I just. I forgot, for a second.”

Rain drizzles weakly on Eliot’s forehead. It’s maybe the worst he’s ever felt, aside from sitting at Quentin’s _literal_ funeral, to look at him shoving his hat back on his head with shaking hands, jaw tense and thinking, _fuck_ , thinking Eliot doesn’t want him. Thinking Eliot doesn’t love him. Thinking Eliot’s ever wanted anything more than he wants to press a gentle, familiar kiss to Quentin’s lips and pull away to see him smiling. Ever wanted anything more than he wants to see Quentin smiling, period.

“Q,” he says.

Quentin looks at him, brow scrunched tensely.

Even to Eliot’s own ears, his voice sounds broken, and small. But it’s the only voice he has right now, and he’d rather die for real than chicken out again. “Q, I should have told you. I should have told you every fucking day, baby, and I didn’t because I’m messed up and I’m a coward, but I’m saying it now.”

“You’re not a coward,” Quentin manages, quietly. It’s so, _so_ Quentin, to try and comfort Eliot in the middle of his own tearful confession, when Quentin’s the one who’s been hurt, Eliot’s the one who needs to be comforting. It’s so him, and Eliot saw the way he started to melt a little when Eliot said _baby_ , the way he caught himself. “You never had to say it, El—“

“I did. I do.” Eliot meets his gaze and holds it. And holds it. “I have to say it, because you’re supposed to say the things you mean, and I’ve never meant anything more in my life.”

He breaks into a smile. Quentin breaks into a smile in return, tentative and brilliant as the sun coming out after a storm. He covers his mouth with his hand, and Eliot steps forward and uncovers it, uncurls his fingers, presses his lips carefully to Quentin’s palm, the same place he kissed him.

“ _Baby,”_ he murmurs. “I love you. I love you—so much it feels like it’s too big for my body, like—“

Quentin kisses him.

It’s more a graceless mashing of lips than a kiss, but it’s _Quentin_.

Quentin, too eager to hold himself back. Quentin, maybe as overflowing with it as Eliot is himself, this fragile golden _finally_ , the visceral immediate reality of hands grabbing tight enough to bruise and Eliot’s nose sliding against the rain on Quentin’s cheek and the smaller man pulling back to ask, even now unsure of himself, “This is okay, right?”

“So much more than okay, Q,” Eliot murmurs, and pulls him back in.

Quentin makes a soft sound against his mouth. Eliot recognizes it, the way he recognizes each and every one of Margo’s smiles, how it feels to cast with his own hands, the slope of Quentin’s eyebrows in profile. He slips his hand onto the side of Quentin’s neck just in time to catch him when he tilts his head back and opens his lips, sliding his thumb over the hinge of his jaw.

Kissing Quentin isn’t just _now_ , Eliot finds. Every other person he’s ever shared this level of intimacy with, it’s been about the moment, the present, but kissing Quentin bears the weight of history.

Eliot draws away, dragging Quentin’s lower lip between both of his, and says, “I love you,” close against his mouth, just because he can. Because Quentin is _here,_ in his arms.

Quentin is smiling against his lips. “I love you, El. I think I always—always.”

“Always,” Eliot agrees.

Several thousand years later, when the rain has soaked them through and they’re shivering from cold, the warmth of their bodies no longer enough to sustain them, they run into the cottage. Eliot closes the creaking door behind him and nearly cries again, hearing it, and Quentin says, “The roof—“ and Eliot’s reaching for the tin bucket they keep by the door and sliding it under the leak before he can even finish the thought. When he straightens up, Quentin’s staring at him with this look like he just got hit by a train, like he’s seen a ghost, and he says, broken, _“El—“_

Several thousand years after that, stripped of their wet clothes and curled under the blankets in bed, Eliot weaves his fingers through the fringe of the afghan that Quentin knitted himself and tells him everything. Quentin listens with his head rested on Eliot’s chest, rising and falling with the motion of his breath. In a lull, when all’s quiet except for their breathing and the patter of the rain on the roof, he says, “The golden ticket will only let you stay here for a few hours. There are different rules, with the underworld.”

Eliot runs his fingers through Quentin’s hair. “Can I take you with me?”

“No. One ticket per person.”

“But I can come back, right? I did already.”

“You can come back. But El, you can’t stay here. This isn’t—you’re not supposed to.”

“Fuck _supposed to_ ,” Eliot says. Quentin turns over on his stomach and props his chin on folded arms to peer up Eliot’s bare chest at him, and if he thinks that look on his face is doing anything but make Eliot more determined to keep him, he’s insane. “I’ll find another golden ticket, then. I’m sure there are plenty of them. Hermes probably has, like, a hundred pairs of winged sandals.”

Quentin huffs a laugh. Just one, but Eliot will take it. “Okay. Find another one.”

“I will,” Eliot says, defiantly.

“I know,” Quentin says softly, eyes locked with his. “I know you will.”

A moment later, Eliot’s gone.

Charlton startles straight off the couch, spilling what’s left of the vodka. “Dear lord. Eliot. You’re naked!”

Eliot leans back and crosses his legs, uncaring. It’ll be good for the kid, to be regularly scandalized. Help integrate him into modern society. Maybe Eliot will throw a party tonight, really christen Charlton in the modern age. Margo’s not here, but suddenly Eliot’s feeling more himself than he has in literal, actual years.

“Charlton,” he says. “Call the cavalry. We have a quest.”


End file.
